Shafaq News/ Two Iraqi officers died in Kirkuk when ISIS members attacked a security point in Kirkuk late Tuesday.

A security source told Shafaq News Agency that the terrorists targeted the Iraqi forces on the Al-Hawali-Sulaymaniyah road of Kirkuk Governorate, which killed a lieutenant and an officer in the police department.

Security reinforcements were sent to the scene.

In 2014, ISIS captured swathes of territory in Iraq and was defeated by the Iraqi forces in 2017, backed by the international community.

The Iraqi army forces regained in October 2017 control of the Kirkuk Governorate and the areas extending across a strip starting east from Diyala, passing through Saladin, and reaching southwest of Nineveh. These are disputed areas between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdistan used to keep control over all those areas after the collapse of the Iraqi army in 2014 following the attack by ISIS.

Since 2017, security in Kirkuk and the disputed areas has been maintained through multiple federal forces, including the army, the federal police, the counter-terrorism service, and the Popular Mobilization Forces.

An announced agreement between Baghdad and Erbil stipulated that four joint security centers be formed in the disputed areas in Kirkuk, Diyala, Makhmur, and Mosul, to cover the vacuum areas between the army and the Peshmerga to prevent ISIS activities. However, the agreement is now suspended, and both sides accuse each other of a lack of responsiveness.

ISIS used this conflict to move its sleeper cells across the region and launch attacks against security forces and civilians.